Extra Credit – Jack Roger

I don’t believe machines can think because of the Turing test. Yes, that seems like it may be a bit backward but hear me out. In the Turing test, a machine could think if it could fool a person into thinking it was thinking. This got me thinking… there are two flaws to this, (I will exclude the obvious flaw: the ambiguity of the word “think” because I feel we have gone over this a great deal and it is not completely relevant to my argument.) The first flaw is the word “fool.” This word tells me that Turing did not believe machines could think, not now and probably not ever. Because the word “fool” implies that the machine is actually not thinking. Turing could have used a different word such as convince; because to convince someone is to cause them to believe firmly in the truth of something. But to fool someone means that you are tricking, deceiving, or duping the person, you are telling a lie. The second flaw is who it is fooling. Is the machine fooling everyone? Just one person? Does it fool these people for a second? Forever? This is not clearly defined, but in my opinion, to really pass the Turing test a machine must fool every single person who exists. Not only this, but it must fool them always. But wait there’s more…. to thoroughly convince me that the machine is thinking using the Turing test, it must fool every human who has ever existed and ever will exist…. and seeing as this is not really possible, machines cannot think. Fin.